How to get plants from cuttings
 (Read 100+ times)
By Glory Lennon
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When I was a child I often saw my mother, a great plant lover, snip a piece off a friends bush or cut a sprig off a relation’s house plant. She would then take these snippets home and either place the in water or stick them directly in a tiny pot of good, rich garden soil. Miraculously, at least to a small child as I was, these would root, they would grow, they would become an addition to my mother’s vast collection of plants.
This had me fascinated. How did she know which would root in soil and which in water? And some plants, the common Golden Pathos house plant in particular, she would keep in water even though she had some of the same kind growing in soil. How could this be? How did she know they could grow perpetually in either?
It helped that my mom lived many years in a tropical nation and what we consider house plants in the good old northeast corner of the USA she had growing in the woods which she passed on a daily basis along the way to the river, the school or grocery store. She knew these plants inside and out like I now know Rhododendron, dandelions and Purple Loosestrife.
So, I mimicked my mother to find the secret to this amazing process of getting plants from cuttings. At first I started with the same process. Yes, I stole a piece of her Golden Pathos. It was growing like a weed in the house. She never even missed it. I placed it in a small glass of water and watched it. Within a few days roots would emerge and grow at an astonishing rate. That got me hooked. I never missed an opportunity after that to see what would grow and how and how long it would take and why.
I learned a lot. I learned that African Violets will rot in water but will do very nicely in ever-so-slightly-damp potting soil though pure vermiculite works best. The leaf has to be half buried for it to root and it takes its sweet time doing it. Patience is not only a virtue here but a necessity.
I learned that most tropical house plants root quite well in water and can often stay in water. Why? We often forget these come from tropical RAIN forests where it’s extremely humid. These plants often grow aerial roots due to all this moisture all around them. Ever notice these tropicals don’t do very well in dry, winter homes? Guess why that is. They need humidity, they crave it.
I learned that the suckers you pull off a Tomato plant roots very easily in water to give you more plants. I even would take to bringing in a favorite tomato plant into the house to winter over. It didn’t matter that it looked sickly by the end of Winter because all I wanted it for was its genetic code. As spring time approached I would snip that baby into several plants, rooted them and had good sized plants in no time for planting out in the green house or directly into the veggie patch. Sounds a bit like something Dr. Frankenstein would do but, hey, I do consider myself a bit of a mad scientist when it comes to plants. My garden is my laboratory.
I learned that it is the survival instinct inherent in all plants that stimulates the naturally occurring rooting hormone to exude from the plant to hasten the rooting. Once you cut a piece off a plant it feels threatened and immediately the hormone leaks out in the hope it can still survive. Sometimes stressing the plant gets good results.
My friend often marveled that I could and did root all sorts of things on my kitchen window sill when she never could. “I change the water every day so why don’t mine root?” she whined pathetically.
Ah, well, that was the problem. She was removing the rooting hormone enriched water. A big no-no if you want to root cuttings. The cuttings have to stay immersed in their own rooting hormone. As a matter of fact, I use the water in which something has rooted over and over again to root other, more difficult to root, cuttings.
I had Coleus, Cuban Oregano, Mint, Petunia, Sedum and various plants whose names I never learned because I stole tiny bits from friends who didn’t know the name either. Don’t have to know the name to root it I found. I even got a Marigold to root. I never knew it could. My son had clipped it off a plant and gave it to me as a loving gesture so I placed it on the window sill and it rooted. Funny, huh?
All plants have this rooting hormone just not in the same reliable proportion. Willow branches in particular are drowning in the stuff. A huge branch fell off our Weeping Willow during a storm once and fell into the pond. We were too busy cleaning up the rest of the storm damage to get to it quickly and a good thing too. It rooted all by itself! And yes, I planted it. An instant six foot high weeping willow tree from a broken branch. I couldn’t believe it. The willow really wants to live.
Cut off a sprig from any Weeping willow, Pussy willow, Corkscrew willow or Hybrid willow and see if you can’t get that baby to root in water. You can make your own rooting hormone with willow branches soaking in water. You then can use that water to root other cuttings. Your own rooting hormone for free! Aren’t you glad to know that?
There are those plants that don’t need water to root or rather that they tend to rot before they root I already mentioned the African Violet but there are others. Hydrangea is another. They require a different means to propagate such as layering used more often for shrubs and vines.
Forsythia likes to expand its horizons that way in particular by laying its branches on moist soil and rooting itself in place. You can help it along by cutting off branches and rubbing the end until the outer bark is removed to reveal green cambium layer. Stick this end in the damp soil and they root very easily just as long as the soil remains moist. Placing mulch around them helps to maintain moisture in the soil. I planted an entire hedge from clippings off a neighbors huge, overgrown bushes that she was cutting back severely. I just couldn’t let those poor branches go to waste, could I?
Getting plants from cuttings made my garden expand on the cheap. I would buy one plant and after it was well established and if I particularly liked it I would make more plants from it. Can’t get better than that. It’s mostly trial and error to find which plants grow in what better and some refuse to at all. So, don’t be discouraged if something doesn’t root instantly. Be a scientist, watch, learn, discover. It’s the only way to be a true gardener. And have fun while you’re at it.
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Author Bio Box: Glory Lennon
 For more Garden encouragement, amusing short stories and novel excerpts visit my sight on HELIUM: http://www.helium.com/users/32782
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